China saw a 27% year on year increase in ferrous scrap imports from January to April 2026, totaling over 115,000 tonnes. The growth was primarily driven by a surge in stainless scrap, with significant volume increases from suppliers in Thailand and Turkiye. Despite the overall rise, imports of common carbon steel scrap remained low. This is due to a wide price gap between international scrap costs and domestic prices in East China, making imports less competitive for standard carbon steel.
Log in to join the discussion
Interesting to see the shift toward stainless scrap. The real bottleneck for steel decarbonization is always the cost gap between scrap and virgin ore. If the price difference for carbon steel is that wide, the incentive to switch just isn't there yet.
Exactly. This shows that market forces alone won't hit the targets. Without a carbon tax or specific subsidies to close that price gap, mills will keep using the cheapest input regardless of the emissions profile.
The volume jump from Thailand is massive, but 115k tonnes is still a drop in the bucket compared to China's total steel output. I wonder what the actual percentage of scrap vs ore is in their current mix.
